A store owner was tacking a sign above his door that read, “Puppies For
Sale”. Signs like that have a way of attracting children, and sure
enough, a little boy appeared under the sign. “How much are you going
to sell the puppies for?” he asked. The store owner answered, “Anywhere
from $30 to $50.”

The little boy reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. “I
have $2.37,” he said. “Can I please look at them?” The store owner
smiled and whistled. Out of the nearby kennel came Lady who ran down
the aisle of the store, followed by 5 tiny balls of fur. One puppy was
lagging behind.

Immediately, the little boy singled out the lagging, limping, puppy and
said, “What’s wrong with that little dog?” The store owner explained
that the Vet had examined the puppy and discovered that it did not have
a hip socket. It would always limp, it would always be lame.

The little boy became excited. “That’s the puppy I want to buy.” The
store owner siad, “No, you don’t want to buy that little dog, if you
really want him, I’ll give him to you.”

The little boy got very upset. He looked straight into the store
owner’s eye and pointing his finger said, “I don’t want you to give him
to me. That little dog is worth as much as the other dogs and I’ll pay
full price. I’ll give you $2.37 now and 50 cents a week until I have
him paid for.”

The store owner countered, “You really don’t want to buy this little
dog, son. He’s never going to be able to run and jump and play with you
like the other puppies.”

At this, the little boy reached down and rolled up his pant leg to
reveal a badly twisted and crippled left leg, supported by a metal
brace. He looked up at the store owner and said, “Well, I don’t run so
well myself and the puppy will need someone who understands.”

(In life it does not matter what happens to you..good or bad. It all
depends on how you treasure the good, and react to the bad.)

A wonderful story comes from 19th Century England. According to the
account,Queen Victoria was once at a diplomatic reception in London. The
guest of honor was an African chieftain. All went well during the meal
until, at the end, finger bowls were served. The guest of honor had never
seen a British finger bowl, and no one had thought to brief him beforehand
about its purpose. So he took the bowl in his two hands, lifted it to his
mouth, and drank its contents down!

For an instant there was breathless silence among the British privileged
guests, and then they began to whisper to one another. All that stopped,
however, when Queen Victoria silently took her finger bowl in her two hands,
lifted it, and drank its contents! A moment later, 500 surprised British
ladies and gentlemen simultaneously drank the contents of their own finger
bowls.

It was the queen’s uncommon courtesy that guarded her guest from certain
embarrassment.

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge
things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go
and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. The first son went
in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the
youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe
what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and
twisted. The second son said no–it was covered with green buds and full of
promise. The third son disagreed, he said it was laden with blossoms that
smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he
had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe
and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment. The man then
explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen
but ONLY one season in the tree’s life. He told them that you cannot judge a
tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they
are–and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life–can only be
measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it’s winter, you will miss the promise of your spring,
the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall. Don’t let the pain of
one season destroy the joy of all the rest. Don’t judge life by one
difficult season.

Persevere through the difficult patches and better times are sure to come
some time or later.

I have been asked by a researcher at Williams University to comment on the shift from ‘old’ tourism to ‘new’ tourism in London.

Well I think there’s a bit of duplicity here. The ones that really benefit from ‘development’ are the councils, who earn millions in tax from new office and residential developments and are the ones that decide whether development goes ahead. It’s in their and the developers interests to promote a ‘new’ London. Also the newer tourist attractions are businesses rather than state-supported cultural events.
And of course there’s the dumbing-down of tourism generally: most Britons prefer to drink and club and this is a major earner for Britain both at home and abroad (Ibiza).

Old London is vanishing fast - Spitalfields market - old, anarchic and non-profit-optimised has been desecrated (see www.smut.co.uk for details) and now they’re after Smithfield - for offices. Ask a blue badge guide and they’ll tell you that things are being torn down weekly (there was a very good article on that in one of the papers a year or so ago)
The important thing about making money out of tourism is added value (as described by Marx, in London!) and ‘new’ tourism is about adding value. However London is a very expensive city to eat drink and stay in (though clubbing is very cheap, admission and an E can be had for the price of a round of drinks) and a lot of that money goes into tax. Heritage actually costs money - upkeep cripples on old buildings.

I think there’s a shift of London as a concept under Ken Livingstone towards a more mercantile paradigm away from the old cultural paradigm - there’s a good book called I think litterature and the working classes which shows that in 1950 people liked Shakespeare, old buildings, high culture, especially the working classes who saw it as improving. With the shift towards a leisure culture where activities are no longer worthy (indeed worthy activities are marketed as a bore…) and shopping is the model the old London with it’s ’stuffy galleries’ doesn’t fit - a designer lifestyle needs designer goods: the quality of the work in the Tate Modern is actually very poor (IMHO) compared with, say, the National Gallery, but the TM is the major ‘designer lifestyle’ gallery.

So at root its a shift towards disposable commodities rather than enduring cultural ones: selling an experience that accords with advertising culture. Nowhere is it suggested that there is an enduring worth to high culture per se. It’s old, and non-disposable and in the end doesn’t make as much money for Britain. And as for the iconic ‘old London’ attractions: The Changing of the Guard etc they’re usually free…

There’s also something about the fall of an often northern academic high cultural egalitarianism (Lord Snow, David Hockney, Berkoff, Bacon, Melvyn Bragg etc) who used to rule the cultural roost and haven’t been replaced (this has, I believe to do with the decline of grammar schools and equal access to high-culture/academia that has been replaced with the ‘all win prizes’ mentality) people who’d been given a privileged access to high culture and wanted to pass on the good news have been replaced with another wave of those who are part of the ‘low culture/relativistic’ school: the grandees have been disinherited. It’s a paradigm shift that has worked its way through to the tourist arena. On the arts side the interesting battle is between Serota and people like Sewell for the galleries.

There is some good news: the science museum and the V & A have had a fantastic makeover, but they don’t feature on the tourist syllabus… I am very pessimistic about the survival of the ‘old London’ attractions: no-one is fighting their corner and the state apparatus is too powerful and too obsessed with the measurable (the Blair government’s obsession with targets). In the end (as they say so eloquently in ‘The History Boys’ , Alan Bennett play on just your topic, currently on at the National and sold out..) you can’t measure the worth of ‘old culture’ … and as Larkin says, books are a load of crap…